The Best Part
by xcoloursandpromises
Summary: "Stay a little while, sweetheart." What happens after has been far too long in coming. Shunsui/Nanao


**A/N:** I saw these lyrics and I knew something had to be done with them. I toyed around with other couples before I decided on another ShunNao. These two deserve so much more love.

**Warnings** for canon-typical violence, and angst. Set just after the Winter War.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach!

* * *

_if you must die, sweetheart_

_die knowing your life was my life's best part_ – keaton henson, you

* * *

_**The Best Part**_

One day, things go very not right.

It's a routine hollow extermination mission in one of the outer districts, picked up by her and her captain for distraction's sake, she reckons. The war is still fresh in everyone's mind and she supposes this is his way of getting as far away from that day as possible.

It's alright, she thinks–she hadn't been there, but she had seen enough from the Twelfth's surveilence teams. She carries that day with her as much as he does–she had seen it all, all those battles and the blood and defeats.

She had seen him fall, both times, had seen Captain Ukitake and Captain Yamamoto fall, had seen Hinamori's face when Captain Hitsugaya stabbed her. She had heard Rangiku's cries as they rung out in the surveilence room at the Twelfth Division, and she doubts she'll ever get the sound of it out of her head completely.

She had seen them all break and collapse in one way or another, and she hadn't been able to do anything about it.

So she takes the distraction and she goes with him, for sanity's sake, and it's supposed to be easy, a break from routine. They're a small pack of low level hollows, and it's not a big deal, everything's okay.

Well.

Until it isn't.

* * *

It's a hollow, in the end–a ridiculously low-level one and an uncovered blind spot, reflexes dulled by the extent of his wounds. He'd said he was fine, when they left the Eighth.

She'd stupidly taken his word for it.

Blood, red and glittering, arcs across the sky like something out of a novel or a nightmare. He drops to his knees. The hollow disintegrates, courtesy of her tantō, the last of the bunch.

She drops beside him and her voice is hoarse from shouting–he can't die like this, he's lived far too long to die from something as utterly _ridiculous_ as this.

She grabs hold of his haori and orders him to hang on, and when he smiles, it's red-stained white and glittering in the sunlight.

The last thing he hears is her screaming at him to just hold on, but then everything fades and goes sort of black around the edges, and her eyes filling with tears are the last thing he sees before the darkness takes him.

* * *

_Memories flash across his mind in fragments, torn and aching and lovely_

_Stay with me, captain–for god's sake, for _my_ sake, just stay_

_There are the days from his childhood, lonely at home, and that time he sent his older brother gasping to the ground because he got mad and his reiatsu flared too high for him to handle_

_You can't die, not like this_

_His father yelling, screaming, calling him a monster and a disgrace and all the lovely things in between because he jeapordized the golden child_

_Please don't–_

_His mother, beautiful and scared and she's sorry, Shunsui, she's so very very sorry_

_Please, captain, I–I just_

_There's Yama-jii and rulers on knuckles, lazy summers with Jushirō's family, the first girl he ever kissed and her lips were so soft_

_If you wake up, I'd tell you so much_

_He remembers Lisa-chan and _that night_ and he still wakes up in a cold sweat, sometimes, seeing those eyes and wishing he could have done more_

_I'd tell you how much I like that ridiculous pink kimono and how irritating you are when you make me chase you around Sereitei with the paperwork and how much I don't really mind when you write me stupid love poems_

_He remembers Nanao. Brave Nanao. Quiet Nanao. Nanao when she's angry or flustered, or that one time when she thought he was unconscious at the Fourth and she cried and cried and cried_

_I'd tell you how much I wish you meant it when you tell me you love me–_

_The pain blooms suddenly, sharp across his front and on his side and it's so dark now–dark and cold and very very quiet and the shadows are so tempting_

_I'd tell you how much I–_

_They grab and they try to drag him under, but something golden and bright keeps him adrift_

_Stay a little while, captain_

_The light gets brighter_

_Stay for me_

_And he never could deny her anything, really_

* * *

He wakes slowly, to the ugly green of the Fourth Division's walls and the smell of antiseptic that was becoming all too familiar.

Something heavy on his arm makes him turn, and he sighs when he spies the top of a dark-haired head lying on the bed. Her eyes are closed and her breathing is light and even, glasses left askew. He lifts a sleep-heavy hand and gently removes them, placing them carefully on the bedside table.

He pauses, feeling something wet brush against his fingertips. A part of him recognizes this and makes some half-cocked connection, but a bigger part begs for more sleep, so he drifts into the dark and doesn't notice the wetness left on his lieutenant's lashes.

* * *

When he wakes the second time, it is to an unusually quiet Nanao, a silently chastising Jushirō, and a frighteningly irate Unohana.

There is some lecturing, done in intervals by an odd Ukitake-Unohana tag team that's quite effective in making him feel like a misbehaving puppy.

Nanao, for her part, still remains unnervingly silent, staring out the window, caught in a world he can't get to. She only laughs a little when Unohana redresses his wounds with more force than absolutely necessary, telling him in no uncertain terms that he is free to go but to _take it easy,_ and threatening various parts of his anatomy if he doesn't.

The sound that spills out of her mouth when Ukitake and Unohana sweep out of the room is as sweet as music, but very brief, reeled in before he can even smile in return.

"Is something wrong, Nanao-chan?" he asks softly, when she sidles up to him to hand him a fresh change of clothes.

Something flickers behind her eyes. "No, nothing, sir."

He frowns as she sweeps out of the room, before he can even reply.

She's a terrible liar.

* * *

She takes him home, after.

It's a lot of fumbling and slow walking, partly due to his injuries, partly due to the fact that he has to say hello to every person that passes him, but they make it to his house eventually.

"Come inside?" he says hopefully, and when she looks away, hesitant, his grin turns salacious and he waggles his eyebrows suggestively in an attempt at normal. "Nanao-chan can nurse me back to health."

Her resulting snort sounds like music to his ears. They haven't had their usual banter since before the war–he's missed it, missed it between the battles and hospital stays, missed _her_.

"If you still feel the urge to be nursed, Captain, you can always go back to the Fourth," she says, fine brow arched.

He shivers in mock-horror. "Nanao-chan, how can you say that? You heard what Captain Unohana plans to do to my–"

"She never directly threatened anything; you're fine."

He pouts. "There were _implications_, Nanao-chan. It's enough that she had the thought in the first place."

He gets his door open and gestures to the dark space over the threshold. She hesitates.

She steps inside.

* * *

_(he remembers things–memory-dreams and living like he's dying, and her voice in his head, helping him as he swims through the fog_

_he remembers the things she said she'd tell him, when he woke up_

_he remembers please don't's and he remembers stay stay stay_

_just stay a little while, precious)_

* * *

It's warm in his house.

She picks around the furniture with practiced ease–it's not like she's never been in his home before, and by now, after decades of dragging him home after parties or waiting for him to wake up so she could escort him to a meeting, she looks normal in this space, like she belongs.

There's a brief spell of ease, when he thinks they're okay, when they banter and laugh like normal–and then he notes the anxiety in her eyes and the way her gaze is far-off, distracted, consumed by something beyond him, and he realizes just how good she's gotten at hiding from him. Not the best, for sure, but she even had him fooled for a bit.

He asks again, and is prepared to ask a million more times until she talks.

"What's wrong?"

She says it's nothing, again, and oh, she's too bad a liar for the likes of him. There are too many years between them, too many close calls and missed confessions, or perhaps too many communication errors, or perhaps all of it, all of it at once.

_If you wake up, I'd tell you so much_

So he asks it again, and his eyes are dark, and she knows that look. It's his serious look, the one he never wears for real around her, the one that says he won't accept anything less than the truth.

"I wanted to protect you," she says finally, after a moment. "I don't know what from–hollows or Aizen, or the things you see when you're sleeping. All of it, I suppose. You wanted a distraction, and I gave you one with that mission, and I shouldn't have. Not with your injuries. I'm sorry."

She looks guiltier than he's ever seen her, head down and eyes averted, shoulders stiffening when he approaches her slowly.

A thousand words stay suspended in the air. A million different outcomes float leisurely by. Words burn in both their throats. They'll talk about it more later–everything she said she'd say and never did, and them and her and him and everything in between.

His hand under her chin, and something that's far too long in coming. The five words that follow are ones she recognizes, whispered in quiet desperation before the relief squad came.

"Stay a little while, sweetheart."

His lips on hers, and she does, she does, she does.

* * *

**A/N:** Yes? No? Confusing? I hope not. It's a vibe I get with all my stories, but no one's said anything so far. I remain hopeful. It might just be a bad fear I have of plot holes. Oh well, tell me what you think, if you want or can. I struggled so bad with the characterization of this, but I blame it on bad circumstances. I need to do something fun and flirty with these two, or at least a little light, one day. Angst is not really their forte, or at least not when I do it.

Also, would anyone be willing to read a Rose/Lisa fic? I've got a funny little tidbit planned for them, and wanted to know the general consensus of the couple. They don't seem to have much of a fanbase.

Thanks again, and reviews are always appreciated!


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